Madama Butterfly Analysis

The Theme of cultural encounter between the East and West as represented in Giocomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly This paper attempts to analyze the concept of cultural encounter between the East and the West as presented in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and the libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica. Madama Butterfly explores the Western ideas about the East, and the issues of race, gender and sexual identity, along with the portrayal of the tensions between the two cultures. Arthur Groos in his essay, “Return of the Native” points out that “the opera presents an inter-racial tragedy set during one of the most momentous historical

Moreover, the way she introduces herself in terms of a group or as “we” (24) focuses on the Japanese or rather Eastern norm of importance attached to a group rather than an individual which deviates from the Western notion of

Her childishness, comprised with her ‘seductive graces’ and ‘mystery of her voice’ (Giacosa 20) makes her an object of desire for Pinkerton whose idea of the “frail wings should be broken” (Giacosa 20) establishes his tyrannical nature, and reiterates the master-slave dialectic where the colonizer rules over and controls the colonized. Pinkerton thus represents the masculine West with its desire to dominate the feminine East represented by Butterfly, an idea which is also seen in Sydney Owenson’s The Missionary, where the central characters, Hilarion and Luxima become embodiment of their respective cultures― Hilarion embodies the ‘lofty’, ‘commanding’, ‘solemn’ West, and Luxima represents everything Oriental-‘luxuriant’ and ‘lovely’. Dorinne K. Kondo in his essay “Madam Butterfly” points out that “Butterfly is defined by attributes conventionally associated in Western culture with Asian―or even worse, "Oriental"―women”